Dozens of boxes, piles of folders, and a collection of valuables. That is what Paul Sars, researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH), inherited in 2015 from a dear departed friend. Her name: Diet Kloos, a well-known oratorio singer. “I'll never forget how I got to know her in the late 1980s,” Sars remembers. “She telephoned me to tell me that after the Second World War, she had had a brief relationship with Paul Celan, a famous Jewish poet who had survived the Holocaust and about whom I had written a book. She even still had some of his love letters. For me, as a young researcher, that was of course incredibly valuable: in fact, those love letters and poems eventually formed the basis for my PhD.”
What intimate wartime love letters reveal about life in the resistance
At first glance, they may look like just another lovesick couple during the Second World War. And yet, eighty years later, the hapless couple Jan and Diet Kloos are giving us new insights into life in the resistance. Courtesy of their bequeathed love letters. “In their letters, they were remarkably open for their time.”
Widow
From that first contact, a special bond developed between Sars and the elder Diet, a bond that later grew into a strong friendship. “For my work, I wrote many articles about her and her relationship with Paul Celan. In the process, I came to know more and more about her, including her life before that period. In time, she told me that she was a widow and that the Nazis had killed her husband during the war.”
The husband in question was Jan Kloos, five years older than Diet, a biologist at the Plant Protection Service in Wageningen. Diet was 20 and studying at the Conservatoire when she met Jan in mid-May 1944. They soon developed an intimate relationship. During the period from June to September 1944, the two exchanged many love letters, often several a day. Jan wrote from Wageningen, and Diet from Dordrecht. “In these letters, they also hint at their joint work for the resistance movement,” says Sars, who inherited these love letters as part of Diet's estate.
Sars: “The letters mostly contain elaborate declarations of love, but here and there they also write in veiled terms about, for example, how they helped Jewish people in hiding. For instance, Jan refers to a note with an assignment he had left for Diet at her house and about experiences with a reckless ‘customer’, by which he means a person in hiding. Clearly, in his work as a researcher, he didn’t have to deal with any ‘customers’.”
Short-lived
Jan makes another allusion to the resistance when, in one of his letters, he elaborates on the situation of the Jewish girl Lientje. Sars: “The letter makes it clear that Jan had asked a resistance woman in Dordrecht to ask Diet to bring Lientje to him in Ede by train. Jan would then take Lientje to a safe house to help her escape a raid. At the Ede station, he thought he had been betrayed when he saw Lientje not with Diet, but with another woman. In the end, it turned out that the resistance woman in Dordrecht had given the assignment to someone else because she couldn’t reach Diet. Jan writes openly about this.”
However in love Jan and Diet were, their happiness was to be short-lived. They got married in November 1944, because both their mothers thought Diet might become pregnant. Two weeks later, they were both arrested. Diet was released after nine weeks, but Jan was convicted on suspicion of espionage and executed on 30 January 1945 at the age of 25. Diet later received his farewell letter, smuggled out for her from prison. This and their other 45 love letters, as well as unique photographs, have now been made available online to the public as part of Radboud Heritage Collections.
Valuable insights
“Jan and Diet's letters are pretty special,” Sars explains. “Because they were remarkably open for their time. Also about sex. For example, Diet asked Jan in one of the letters how long sperm remained fertile once it was outside the man's body. In addition, the letters show that, even in wartime, ordinary life went on. And the descriptions reflect how messy the resistance was at times: it was just work by people.”
According to Sars, it is important to make sure that both Diet's love letters and her emancipation work are more widely known. “Diet has long been known as the widow of resistance hero Jan Kloos. But before she met Jan, she had been in the resistance for four years and had helped six Jewish people survive the Holocaust. For this work, she was posthumously awarded the Yad Vashem distinction by the State of Israel in 2017. Diet was an intellectual who stood up for her emancipation at a time when this was by no means a given. Not only through her active role in the resistance, but also after the war, when she campaigned for equal pay as a singer.”
The love letters offer valuable insights for researchers who wish to compare their findings on life in the resistance, says Sars. He points to the ease of access that makes the letters easy to search digitally. “They form a kind of a virtual room, with different sources. And they offer a unique glimpse into the lives of two extraordinary people.”
Want to know more? Browse through the love letters of Jan and Diet Kloos (Note: Only available in Dutch).
Waardevolle inzichten
‘De brieven van Jan en Diet zijn vrij bijzonder’, licht Sars toe. ‘Want daarin waren ze opvallend open voor die tijd. Zo ook over seks. Diet vraagt Jan bijvoorbeeld per brief hoelang sperma vruchtbaar blijft zodra dat buiten de man is. Daarnaast laten de brieven zien dat, zelfs in oorlogstijd, het gewone leven doorging. En de beschrijvingen geven weer hoe krakkemikkig het verzet soms georganiseerd was: het was gewoon mensenwerk.’
Volgens Sars is het belangrijk dat zowel de liefdesbrieven als het emancipatiewerk van Diet meer bekendheid krijgen. ‘Diet heeft lang te boek gestaan als de weduwe van verzetsheld Jan Kloos. Maar voordat ze Jan leerde kennen, zat ze al vier jaar in het verzet en ze heeft zes Joodse mensen geholpen om de Holocaust te overleven. Daarvoor is in 2017 nog postuum door de Staat Israël aan haar de Yad Vashem-onderscheiding toegekend. Diet was een intellectuele vrouw die voor haar emancipatie opkwam, in een tijd waarin dat nog geen vanzelfsprekendheid was. Niet alleen door haar actieve rol in het verzet, maar ook na de oorlog, toen ze zich als zangeres inzette voor gelijke beloning.’
De liefdesbrieven bieden waardevolle inzichten voor onderzoekers die hun bevindingen over het leven in verzet willen vergelijken, aldus Sars. Hij wijst op de goede toegankelijkheid die de brieven digitaal makkelijk doorzoekbaar maakt. ‘Ze vormen een virtuele kamer, met verschillende bronnen. Daarmee bieden ze een uniek inkijkje in de levens van twee bijzondere mensen.’
Meer weten? Bekijk de liefdesbrieven van Jan en Diet Kloos
Contact information
- Organizational unit
- Faculty of Arts, Radboud Institute for Culture and History
- Theme
- History